Srinagar, May 29: A Joint Capacity Building Programme on digital/technical investigation aspects related to UAPA cases being conducted on the directions of Director General of Police J&K for Jammu and Kashmir Police officers, Prosecution officers with National Investigation Agency (NIA) commenced at Police Headquarters here on Monday.
The Additional Director General of Police, Armed/IR Jammu and Kashmir, S. J. M. Gillani was the chief guest at the inaugural session.
DGP Armed, J&K, S. J. M. Gillani while speaking on the occasion said that it is an honour and privilege for him to be part of this all-important session. He said that NIA which is a recent organization has emerged one of the leading investigation agencies of the country and added that first DG NIA R.V. Raju was from J&K Police cadre which is a great pride for the J&K Police as an organization. He said that even today a huge number of officers from J&K Police are working in NIA and other investigation agencies of the country.
The ADGP Armed said that crimes today are committed differently from the way they were committed 25 years back adding that on Monday in most of the cases that are committed a lead actor need not be at the scene of crime which was out of imagination a few years back. He said that it is important for the investigators to understand the reality and conduct the investigation with the use of technology. With the advancement of technology, criminals are also resorting to new crimes like identity theft, cyber bullying, financial frauds etc and added that our duty is to protect our people from this all and maintain law and order. To achieve this it is imperative that investigators stay ahead of these modern day criminals by continuously enhancing knowledge and skills, he added. He said that collection of investigation from digital sources would require investigators to understand what to collect, how to collect and how to extract investigation from what was seized and then how to present it in the court of law to ensure that criminals are convicted adding that he is sure that this training programme not only will help the participants to get acquainted with the various tools of data extraction it would also be helpful to understand how proper chain of custody is maintained and integrity of collection is ensured. He urged the participants to make utmost use of this opportunity to enhance their modern investigation skills.
On behalf of DGP J&K, ADGP (Coord/Hqrs) PHQ, M K Sinha welcomed NIA faculty, senior police officers and trainee officers in the Capacity Building Training Programme. He said that only a continuous and constant up-gradation of skills is going to make them relevant in investigation and to the course of justice at large.
He said that there are unlimited resource materials on the internet and emphasized upon officers to keep focus on learning new things and upgrading their knowledge. He advised them to take full advantage of the training programme and extract maximum from the lectures of the technical expertise team of NIA. He thanked the NIA DGP and Hqrs for supporting and providing the expert faculty for the training programme.
ADGP Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar while speaking on the occasion said that during the past few years a large number of UAPA cases were registered and disposed of successfully and added that yet there is an imperative need to improve conviction rate of such cases which he said would get better only with quality investigation.
He said that organizing these capacity building programmes with NIA will help officers of SIA & SIU besides IOs of district Police to enhance the investigating skills as has been the case in the past training programmes. He thanked the NIA team for supporting J&K Police in organising these training programmes from time to time for the last two years now.
IGP (CIV/Hqrs) PHQ, B S Tuti while delivering the keynote address said that the two days training programme is aimed to enhance digital investigative operatives related to UAPA cases during which eight to nine sessions are being conducted. While sharing his experiences, the IGP said that during the investigation investigators have to be very careful in dealing with the evidence and added that this kind of training program will be very helpful to understand the modern digital investigation techniques.
